Day 7: The Galley

The first day of the cruise, Steve from Canada said that people have been known to gain a pound a day on the ship.

It's me. I'm people.

We went on a five-day Carnival cruise to Cozumel in 2015, and I gained five pounds. We then went on a seven-day cruise to Alaska in 2016 and I gained seven pounds. This is an 18-day cruise. Losing a day at the International Date Line never came at a better time.

We decided to spend some money and go on a galley tour yesterday. Not too different from any other industrial kitchen, but it was interesting to get behind the scenes and talk about the process of serving meals for 3000 passengers. Not surprisingly, a lot of time was spent talking about cleanliness and how they avoid contamination -- incredibly important, as it's probably ridiculously easy to spread food-borne illnesses across the entire ship if you're not careful.

But we also learned about the crazy scale the galley staff has to deal with. The main four dining areas on the ship seat 1800 people at a time. They bake 20,000 buns each day for the entire ship. They cook about 2000 pounds of potatoes every day. They also cook about 7000 eggs and about 500 pounds of that incredible bacon. It's madness. 

What most people don't understand about cruises is that the food is delicious and there's as much as you want. We go to sit-down dining every night for supper (there are lots of buffet-style choices for supper, but sit-down dining is where we meet all the people), and last night I had two entrees. I told our server that I wanted two entrees, and she replied, "Okay, order two entrees," with an air of nonchalance that implied this was the least intrusive request she'd had that day.

There's a pizza place on the ship that will serve me as much pepperoni pizza as I can eat. They will never say, "Sir, you've eaten too much pepperoni pizza." They might say, "Sir, you've eaten all the pepperoni pizza," but only to follow it with, "you will have to wait seven minutes while we cook you a new pizza."

There's also a hot dog shop that will serve me all the hot dogs I want. 25 hot dogs? Done. And a lunch buffet with a wide variety of foods, from curries and stews, to chicken and pasta. And a salad and wrap place that will give you as much Caesar salad as you want. And a breakfast place with perfectly-cooked bacon. Like, seriously: it is so crispy, if we were in prison someone would already be sharpening it into some kind of delicious shiv.

All of this is included in the price of the cruise. And there's just so much of it. I'm here for almost three weeks and I'm still not sure I'll get to eat all the things I want to.

I love the food. But I don't love the idea of bloating myself on every meal, every day -- which I continue to do because the food is right there! This reminds me a little bit of the talks we had about the all you can drink alcohol package. We opted for the virgin cocktails/soda/fancy coffees package, which is working out pretty well for us, and came in at about $20/day -- pretty reasonable for all the (virgin) frozen pina coladas I can drink. But the alcohol package was something like an additional $800 each, not including the mandatory 18% gratuity. And that's ridiculous. Like, we could spend $1000 on booze and still come out ahead.

Tamara and I batted this around a bit, especially when we learned that the passengers are going to be primarily Ozzies. But even with cocktails at about $20 each, we'd have to drink a substantial amount every day to get value from that package. And what we didn't want was to feel obligated to drink when we didn't really want to, just to try and justify the cost. And it's the same with the food: I don't want to think I should be eating pizza just because it's one in the morning and I'm blogging in front of the pizza place.

The lesson here is one of self-control: food might be available, but that doesn't mean I need to take it. So far self-control is losing heavily.

But I'm trying to take it easy. I'm running 5k on the track every morning. I'm more conscious about taking the stairs between decks instead of the elevators. And I'm skipping breakfasts (except for a plate of this amazing bacon every morning after my run). I'm still pretty sure I'm going to come out of this weighing more than when I came in, but maybe I can keep it to a reasonable level; after all, too much of anything -- even me -- isn't always a good thing.